| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Myra Sherman lives in northern California . Her fiction has appeared or will appear in: The Blotter Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, Workers Write-Tales from the Couch, 580 Split , Another Sky Press Horror Anthology, Thuglit, Mobius and others. Her nonfiction appeared in Ars Medica. |
| Hallelujah |
| by Myra Sherman |
| Is it days or months? When will this jail hell end? I shiver in my cage, face down and exposed, horrified. The ruby pentagrams swirling overhead put my meager tattoos to shame. The heavenly angel sings Hallelujah.
“Bruce, remember me. Zelna, from mental health.” As if mental health isn’t an oxymoron. “I want to help you.” The jail bitch. “Bruce, do you hear me?” The mental health Jewess. With her golden-glimmering Chai and gold chain. I know her kind. Heather, who made me love her. Mrs. Berg, who made me kill her. Destroyers of sanity, harbingers of doom. “Okay, Bruce. ‘Nough messin’ around. Get your ass up. Talk to the lady.” A black boot on my naked back. The Nazi guard. Don’t tread on me. The holy serpent. Liberty or death. “That’s okay, Sergeant. I’m going to hospitalize him.” The Jewish bitch. “Bruce, I’m putting you on a hold. Sending you to the hospital.” Judging me, condemning me. “Seems like they coulda dealt with him straight off. Seeing how he was in the hospital to begin with.” “Only five days, but he’s much worse now.” “Well, if you want him at the hospital, he has to wait. Too short on staff to tie up an escort.” The patterns above my head thicken. They swirl down to warn me. “Save me, save me,” I cry in a voice that isn’t mine. But the Jewish mental health bitch and her Nazi guard don’t listen. Hallelujah. I was really into my job. Helping people breathe. Man, what could be better. Yeah, it was good. I cared about my patients. Did the best I could for them. Some people might’ve thought otherwise. They’d have thought wrong. I did my best for them, for all of them. But Mrs. Berg was special. From the minute I saw her, I knew. She was my destiny, my path to the beyond. Like twisted symbiotic serpents, our souls entwined. And the patterns, man, the patterns were awesome and beautiful. I understood what she wanted. Felt her desires, heard her thoughts. It was clear she wanted me to rescue her. To stop the ordeal she never asked for. On the seventh day, I knew it was time. I stood by Mrs. Berg, away from the machines that kept her alive. Her small body was dwarfed in the narrow hospital bed. Her long grey hair was loose and tangled. Her lips quivered. Her frantic eyes rolled wildly from side to side. The endotracheal tube had silenced her voice, but I heard her pleading in the ventilator’s low drone, the heart monitor’s insistent beeping. I checked the composition, the pressure and flow of the gasses entering and leaving her lungs, maintaining her life. Six nights without improvement, the family too stricken to think clearly, if I was the only one able to read the patterns and see the signs, so be it. I stood at her side and carefully adjusted the monitors. The road to salvation. The final sigh. A quick and painless death. One good turn deserves another. Blessed release. Holy patterns. Hallelujah. Bruce, the holy psycho-killer. Hallelujah. I was in the hall just outside the Medical ICU, banging my bleeding head against the wall, screaming about patterns and the blessed snake, when Rich found me. Rich, the hospital security guard with the big heart, who I took the month before to see Goatwhore at the Bourbon Street Bar & Grill in Concord . And although he later decided death metal wasn’t for him, saying, “I just don’t get the lyrics, too goddamn serious,” we were tight after that. And because Rich didn’t have the world’s biggest brain—making him a perfect quasi-cop, just obey the rules, no thinking required—he called for help. It was so fucking humiliating. The ERT put me in four-points. They dragged me to the elevator and down to the Emergency Department. Everybody was looking, wondering what was going on. As if omniscient, I heard them thinking, Is that really Bruce, the respiratory therapist? Of course, he’s always been a little strange, even with his tattooed arms hidden under a lab coat and his long black hair tucked into a hospital issue surgical cap. Why is he screaming? What did he do? Has he always been crazy? “Take it easy, Bruce. It’s Dr. Mirran. I’ve got an injection, Haldol with Ativan, to take the edge off.” “No, I’m not consenting.” “Doesn’t matter, you’re on a hold, as gravely disabled.” “I’m not crazy. Mrs. Berg didn’t want to go on. She begged me to set her free. I had to kill her.” Murderer, murderer, murderer. They judged me, declared my guilt, sent me to jail. They stand looking down at me. The Jewish mental health bitch. And the other one, the African queen. They talk about me. I don’t look or respond. Resistance is futile. “Mcheko, I’m just asking you to call the hospital. Here, his paperwork’s done.” The African grabs the papers. Even without glasses, I know they’re admission forms. From working at the hospital, I recognize the County Health Seal. The African shakes her head. “You think because you got promoted I’ll take your shit? He’s your patient. Bad enough you dragged me in here to cover your old shift.” The silence is deadly. The African stands tall, spittle at the corner of her mouth. The Jewess is red-faced, deflated. “Mcheko, just do it. I need you to cooperate.” I remember when my supervisor got on me, for being late, for making mistakes. “Bruce, I need some cooperation here.” He never understood. I did the best I could. I always did the best I could. Heather used to nag me to try harder. She wanted me off the meth, on my bipolar meds. Like working as a pharmacy tech made her qualified to judge. “You need?” The African looks at the Jewess. She looks at the papers in her hand. She shakes her head. “You need,” she repeats. The Jewess grabs the papers. “Fine, then. We’ll discuss this later.” She walks away, twisted with rage. The African stays behind. She smiles and winks at me. When I look into her eyes I see Mrs. Berg. Heather smiles from the ceiling, her long red hair turned to flame. The patterns dive into my soul. The pentagrams swirl emerald-red and silver-gold. They plunge me into the abyss. But like the flaming Phoenix , the holy psycho-savior will return and once again wield his mighty sword. Bless us all. Hallelujah. |
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| Dec. 2009 |
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